Mail order pay raise

Washington Monthly, June, 2004 by Charles Peters

You may have seen the recent stories about civil servants who got their jobs or promotions through bogus degrees that they bought from institutions where the parchment is granted by mail-order. What you may not know is why government employees would go so far to obtain a degree. The reason is that eligibility for most of the better federal jobs is determined, not on the basis of the written tests the public imagines, but on the basis of a paper record. Degrees make a big difference. But personnel evaluators seldom look behind the paper to see if the degree is real and truly reflects the applicant's ability to do a better job.

Even where written tests are given, the civil service does not always work as the public imagines. In Boston, for example, where most police and fire department jobs are supposed to be awarded by merit testing, only six of 200 top scorers were among the 51 recently, deemed eligible to fill the available jobs. Eleven of the 51 had been outscored by 2,000 points or more by other applicants. What's at work are "preferences." The most well-known of these are preferences for minority applicants. But in Boston, there are 12 other preferences, according to Common Wealth magazine, which may turn out to be The Washington Monthly of Massachusetts. First among them goes to resident children of police firefighters killed in the line of duty. Then come non-resident children of the stone, resident disabled veterans, resident children of police or firefighters injured in the line of duty, non-resident children of the same, resident veterans, resident widows of veterans killed in action or by service-connected disability, and resident non-veterans. Each of these references by itself is understandable. But taken together, they spell the end of hiring on the basis of merit.